Beliefs About the Relationship Between Smoking and Causes of Death

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Abstract
Probabilistic judgments reflecting the perceived health risks of smoking were obtained from 470 subjects. Each subject made one judgment which, depending on the condition, consisted of either: (a)a rating of the likelihood that a hypothetical target person had or had not been a smoker, given that he had died of either lung cancer, heart disease, alcoholism, a road accident, or suicide; or (b) a rating of the likelihood that a hypothetical target person, described alternatively as a smoker or a nonsmoker, would die of lung cancer. In the first set of conditions, subjects were given information concerning the percentage of smokers in the population, and in the second set of conditions, the percentage of deaths from lung cancer. The main findings were: (1) the target person was seen as significantly more likely to have been a smoker than a nonsmoker, if he had died from lung cancer, heart disease or alcoholism, but not if he had died in a road accident or had committed suicide; (2) the target person was seen...

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